Master of longing Tony Leung found an ally in Silent Friend director Ildikó Enyedi

TL: I remember she asked me to go to Marburg a month or two weeks before. Just a month before to walk around, explore the town. She showed me the place that I’m staying in on the campus. She showed me the garden and everything. That’s how we started. She let me just spend time on my set. The first time when I went onto my set, I was like, “Wow.” And I called my friend right after, William Chang, who is the art director for Wong Kar-Wai’s films, and I said, “Wow, the set is really beautiful.” He said, “Can you show it to me? ” I said, “No.” 

IE: What was important was to be on the same page about what the film is about. I wouldn’t ever need to give advice to him on how to act. It’s a beautiful addition––the element of surprise––to what he brings into the scene. I try to create the physical environment, but also the human environment where it can freely develop. Our production designer, Imola Lang, I worked with her for quite awhile already for this [to make a] very boring professor home in a German university. It was a very tricky thing to make it very simple, but at the same time, serving as a life background for Tony. I think she gathered hundreds of closeups from Tony’s previous films just to learn his face, learn his being, and somehow to fit into this environment, to serve him in a very secret way.

TL: Ildikó used to give me a lot of space to play around. When I prepared for this character, I approached this character from the neuroscientist angle. I study, I try to convince myself that I’m a neuroscientist. After all the preparation work I did with neuroscience, plants, intelligence, stuff like that, I asked, “What else do I need to do for the character, the personality of this character or what? ” She said, “No, you don’t need to prepare anything. You just need to come here.” I think she wants me to feel for every scene. Maybe she wants some authentic, true feelings from that character.

AVC: Speaking of preparation, you’ve performed such a variety of roles throughout your career, including some that rely on very subtle performances like this one. Are there preparation methods you use for those quieter scenes? 

TL: No, I just approach it as I would if I was a neuroscientist. I try to convince myself to be a neuroscientist, and I study all the materials. There’s a lot of study because I still have to go to different universities to meet the real neuroscientists to do research. I have a lot of that kind of stuff inside me. I don’t know where, but somewhere, I just go into that character. I don’t need anything else to help me to act because you have all those things inside you, and you have a different mindset or maybe a different perspective when you look at trees or babies, or you have a different mindset than before you study all this knowledge.

AVC: There are three stories that make up Silent Friend, and each of them have a very distinct visual style. One is in black and white, one is a little bit more grainy like it was shot on film, and then we have the digital age of the 2020s. How did you decide to give each story its own look and aesthetic to build those different timelines out?

IE: The whole film is about exploring the modern human, having sensory experiences, and in cinema, what you have [is] sound and image. The texture of the film is important. The sound design is very important. It has a lot of the story. The only storyline which is really arcing through the film is the 2020 one; the silent friends are really Professor Wong and the old ginkgo tree. I just wanted to give a very direct sensory experience about the worldview of those people who were in that given episode. That’s why the 16mm color––with these very blurry, bright-colored patches, very similar to an Impressionist painting––fitted that worldview of the ’70s, which were all about experiences with your own senses in every sense, really in every territory of life.

What Grete discovers around the turn of the century is the structure of plants. That’s how she approaches natural science. She discovers in everyday, simple plants cosmic structures, and for that, the precision and richness of the 35mm and black and white was perfect because it’s not about the moment in the ’70s, [but] about these holy structures hidden in the plants. That sort of precision of the digital for 2020––these huge spaces, these huge windows––first separates Tony from the garden, which then slowly dissolves. It was just the right choice for 2020, a bit of the loneliness, being separated, and longing for connection.

AVC: What about the ginkgo tree intrigued you to pick that particular species to root your story in? 

IE: The ginkgo is an outsider like our human heroes, an outsider in an environment. It is not by chance. It’s called the Living Fossil. It mainly went extinct about six million years ago. It very much fitted these lonely souls, which are the human heroes of this film.

AVC: There’s a quiet sensuality to Silent Friend, including the project to pollinate the tree, but all three human characters experience some form of longing. How did you imbue the film with this subtle sensuality?

IE: It was meant to be an essential part of the film to show that part of life is not limited to humans. A flowering tree enjoys existence, enjoys being alive, enjoys being pollinated. Actually, you can, with sensors, see if a tree is pollinated—it reacts to pollination. The sexual and sensual beauty of life is not limited to humans. That was one of the very important layers of the film. Of course, humans are not excluded from that. We create a world through our sensory experiences.

AVC: As one of the masters of longing on camera, how do you prepare for scenes you know will be a little more tender or vulnerable?

TL: No, I never do any preparation before any scenes. I just go there, do it, and figure it out. This kind of silence is––I think it’s my first time doing that many silent scenes, but I think it’s a pretty different experience for me. I found this silence very powerful too, but at the same time, I feel very calm through all that silence. I don’t know why. When you know exactly who you are, and you are really inside a character, you don’t need anything. Everything just comes out naturally and in a default mode, so you won’t look blank in your eyes or [like] you don’t know what to do.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.